Serials
Serials and other continuing resources, identified from the MARC leader's
bibliographic level (position 07 = s). Every institution's serial holdings
grow along the same historical curve, so these views instead look for what makes
each collection different: how current it is, how far back it reaches, and
what its serials are about.
Active serials over time
How many of an institution's serials were being published in a given year?
This chart contains serial counts in every year from its start to its end (from
the dates in the MARC 008 field), with titles still published running to
Currency: still published, ceased, or unknown
The publication status recorded in the 008 (character 06) is a measure of how living each serial collection is. Columns sum to ~100% since serials without one of these three status codes are omitted.
Vintage: when the serials began
The decade each serial started publishing, as a share of the institution's serials (so collection size drops out and the shapes can be compared directly). A curve pushed to the right holds mostly recent serials; a fatter left tail means deeper historical runs. Only serials with a numeric start year (1700–2025) are counted.
Succession: how serial titles change
Serials rarely keep one identity forever. A journal is renamed, two newsletters
merge into one, an annual review splits into separate series, or a publication
absorbs another. Catalogers record these events directly on the record with two
linking-entry fields: 780 points backward to the title a serial
continues (its predecessor), and 785 points forward to the title it
became (its successor). Together they stitch separate catalog records into a
single lineage. So a run you might think of as one long-lived journal is often
several records chained by these links.
Reconstructing the full chains (title A → B → C) is genuinely hard: it means matching each linked title back to its own record. So these two charts take the low-hanging fruit instead and show how often the links appear, and what kind of change they record. Two things to keep in mind while reading them:
- A single lineage appears as several linked records, not one, so these count links, not distinct histories.
- Whether a link is present reflects cataloging thoroughness as much as the underlying history. A missing link doesn't prove a title never changed.
Serials that are part of a lineage
The share of each institution's serials that carry a predecessor (780) or
a successor (785) link, i.e. that are documented as part of a title's larger
history. The two rows are independent (a serial can have both a predecessor
and a successor), so they do not sum to 100%.
How serials transform
Among the serials that were succeeded by another title, the kind of change
recorded (read from the 785 field's second indicator). Each cell is a share
of all that institution's serials, so a column roughly totals its "continued by
a later title" figure above.
Serials by LC classification
The subject mix within each institution's serials: of the serials that carry an LC call number, the share in each Library of Congress class (so a column adds up to ~100%). Same first-LC-match logic as the LC classification page, restricted to serial records.